A former city dweller who fled north now sees the fruits of his labours as he revels in his new-found life in the country.

THE smell is wonderful. The air is heavy with the sweet warmth of simmering apples, rosehips, lemons and damsons. On the kitchen table sit jars of hedgerow jellies - bramble, elderberry, rowan berry - beautifully clear, their jewel-like colours catching the December sunshine streaming through the windows.

And the best thing is that they taste as good as they look.

It's been a bumper year for hedgerow fruits - blackberries, elderberries, damsons, rose hips, everything really. And while the rest of us might wonder what to do with all this abundance, William Ramsbottom has no such doubts.

He spends his time gathering wild fruit and then turning them into delicious jams, jellies and chutneys under the label of Just William's.

Great accompaniments to festive food and wonderful presents, too.

It is the epitome of rural bliss. Yet a few years ago, William was living in London, designing and making kitchens. His wife, Meg, was offered a job at Glaxo and they happily fled north, living now close to a village near Richmond.

"And now I go to London as little as I can," says William.

William, who trained at Chelsea College of Art, always was a bit of a foodie.

"I was involved with food photography but just loved cooking and entertaining. One way or another, my work has always revolved around kitchens and food," he says.

Enthused by an early Mary Berry cookbook, he started making jellies. "So clear you can read a newspaper through the jar yet with such intensity of flavour."

Walking every day with his dogs he found hedges heavy with fruit that he knew little about.

"But while I'm walking I love talking to people I meet," says William. "In the beginning I'd have to ask them what it was I'd found. Very often people turned out to know so much and would show me where other fruit grew - stuff I would never have spotted on my own.

"Wild raspberries, gooseberries. They are the worst. I thought sloes were bad, but the gooseberry thorns got me even through leather gauntlets. I went through pain and blood for those."

He is very fussy about where he picks - far away from the attentions of dogs, traffic fumes or chemical sprays. He has also planted his own orchard in his garden, full of quinces, medlars, mulberries, occasionally buys some locally grown fruit, such as rhubarb and the only foreign products are lemons and the oranges for the marmalades.

He was also inspired by a fellow enthusiast, a much missed friend and neighbour who sadly died this year.

"She was wonderful and we worked well together, but now it's just me to do the work," says William.

He is limited by the amount of fruit he can pick. "If possible, I spend all summer picking.

This year it was 350lbs of fruit. And I like to do that myself because then I know exactly what I'm getting," he says.

Some of this is frozen in a special way so that he can spread the making over the autumn.

Despite the huge amounts he makes, he still uses domestic size, traditional preserving pans.

"I've experimented with larger sizes but they don't work as well," he says. "Try and be clever and you run into problems. You don't have the same control over the result and you don't get the same colours."

As well as tasting good, the preserves look good too, thanks to William's design background. Definitely not a twee gingham cover anywhere to be seen.

"Of course I wanted them to look nice, but the important part is the product itself," he says.

The flavours are wonderfully traditional - over 30 varieties including crab apple and rowan, quince jelly, rhubarb and ginger, orchard chutney, damson jam, crab, hips and haws jelly. But not a gimmicky ingredient among them.

"There's no need," says William. "If you get really good fruit, you don't need anything like whisky to make it interesting."

Wife Meg - proud, supportive - is currently working abroad and William will join her as soon as he can.

"But I can't go in January. That's when Seville oranges are at their best and I have all my marmalade to make," he says.

The move out of London has really borne fruit.

* Just William's Hedgerow Products, jams, jellies and chutneys are available from a number of local outlets including Wadesdeli, Coniscliffe Road, Darlington; Lakeside Farm Shop, Scorton; Carricks, Snape; and Angus Morton's, Richmond.

SCAM WARNING

EVEN in the so-called season of goodwill, you have to keep your wits about you.

Thanks to Mrs Gray, of Bedale, for warning us of this week's dodgy deal. She has received a letter which carries the British National Lottery logo but says it's the Loteria Primitiva in Spain. And tells her that she has won 815,000 Euros.

Apparently, someone has invested money in a lottery ticket in Spain on her behalf. Oh yeah? And how likely do you think that would be?

Not surprisingly, Mrs Gray was not fooled for a second - especially as the organisers asked not just for her bank details but also details of her next of kin. They also tell her she has to keep the letter secret or she won't get the money.

Smell a rat? So did we.

If you get a letter telling you that you have won a lottery you haven't entered, especially one abroad, IT IS A SCAM.

Don't tell them anything, don't ring them or write to them. Just throw the letter away.

Thank you Mrs Gray.

If you have a letter like this that you're not sure of, then contact Consumer Direct on www.consumerdirect.gov.uk or tel: 084540-40506 for free advice.